I DON’T GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE
By A Friend of Bill W.
I don’t go to church anymore. I don’t go to Sunday Mass and I try to avoid special events for family or friends that might involve attending a Catholic service. I don’t go to church because when I do its pretty far from an authentic spiritual experience. Quite the contrary. I feel resentment, anger, frustration and even sadness. I’ve had people who still go tell me that it’s not about the bishops and priests. It’s about worshipping God. I’ve argued with others and with myself to try to resolve this dilemma but I keep coming back to the same place. The church is supposed to be the people…all of us…but in practice it seems that it’s really all about the pope, the bishops and the priests. Over the past few years we have seen countless innocent people raped and pillaged by the men who believe they are the backbone, the skeletal structure, the font of knowledge and even the floorboards of God’s earthly edifice. The assault has been physical and spiritual and the spiritual pain has been far worse than the physical pain.
Besides all that, I have finally found the strength to fire the god I had been told was all just, all compassionate, all powerful and all loving but who wouldn’t tolerate all kinds of people who didn’t conform to man-made standards of behavior. Worse, how could I believe in a god who would allow his priests…his special chosen ones…to rape children and then allow his bishops and cardinals cover it up and lie about it? That could not have been the real god anyway. It’s an imposter but it still manages to dupe a lot of supposedly smart people.
I can’t reconcile the lofty church-talk with the despicable actions of a lot of professional church people. It’s as if the men who claim to be the guides on the passage between this life and the next don’t really believe what they say. They tell us to read and live the gospels but in practice a lot of the anointed leaders checked their bibles at the door when they entered. “Do as I say but don’t do as I do. I can get away with that but you can’t.”
I go to the Church of St. Bill W. For those who wonder, Bill W. was one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. He and his sidekick, Dr. Bob, found a way to give them the strength to stop drinking. They shared it with other alcoholics and today we have a world-wide community of men and women who share a way of life that not only helps us to stay sober from addictive substances and addictive behavior, but it also helps us live.
I have often thought that AA meetings are reflections of what the earliest Christian gatherings must have been like…no popes, no bishops, no clergy and no property. AA isn’t group therapy. Maybe the best way to sum it up is to say that it’s a community or movement of men and women who share a common spirituality. I’ve been to thousands of meetings all over the world. I’ve been to smoking and non-smoking meetings. I’ve been to gay and lesbian meetings…men’s meetings and women’s meetings. Meetings where the main addiction isn’t booze but drugs, gambling, sex, shopping or even religion. Wherever I go I’m accepted. No one asks me what I believe. They don’t care if I’m divorced, married, single, gay or straight and they surely don’t ask me who I voted for. They just say “welcome” and they mean it.
Unlike the church I don’t take part in anymore, AA doesn’t depend on a special class of people to keep it going. There are no leaders, only “trusted servants” as our bible, the Big Book tells us. And they really are trusted and they really do act like servants. One of the pope’s many titles is “servant of the servants of God.” It’s pretty hard to take that seriously in light of the reality that he’s the absolute monarch with complete power over everything and everyone in the Catholic Church.
The official Church promises mercy, forgiveness, understanding and freedom. In practice it doesn’t follow through on its promises. I have consistently found these virtues in AA though. We’ve all been to the bottom of life’s toxic pit so no one is in a position to be judgmental about anyone else and in practice that’s pretty much how it works. No one tells us how to think or how to act and most important, no one condemns, judges, punishes, shuns, excommunicates or defrocks someone if that someone lapses back into the crazy world of addiction with all of its insane and destructive behavior. For one thing, there isn’t anyone to condemn, defrock or excommunicate because we’re all equal. The movement was founded on the simple experience of two hopeless drunks listening to each other’s stories, accepting each other’s faults and weaknesses and helping each other without condition. They found hope in each others’ weaknesses and strengths. That’s the way it works and that’s one of the pillars that keeps us alive.
I go to AA to stay sober but even more important; I go to continue on my life-long path of recovery. Our Big Book says that we don’t seek spiritual perfection but spiritual progress. A major part of that progress is continuously striving to be a better person. For me one of the challenges has been dealing with resentments. For a long time being involved in the church’s clergy sex abuse nightmare has given birth to serious, deep resentments and more anger than I ever thought it was possible to have. It’s been directed at the popes, the bishops and the priests who have looked the other way. It’s been directed at the so-called “Catholic” organizations that have turned themselves inside out to defend the hierarchy but done nothing to help the victims. It’s been directed at the lay people who can’t seem to wake up and smell the coffee and who still try to rationalize their way out of the harsh reality that all the sex abuse did happen and the popes and bishops really did lie and cover it up. It’s been directed at the entire Catholic heritage.
Being a non-practicing drunk, trying to live the Twelve Steps and going to meetings have helped me deal with the resentments and anger. I slowly realized that these two viruses were joined at the hip and would seriously damage my soul and my sobriety unless I faced the scary challenge of defeating them. Staying angry at the church and especially at the pope and the bishops plus a lot of others was having absolutely no effect on them but a big effect on me. I still have plenty of resentments and anger, but it’s not overwhelming and obsessive to the point that it shapes and runs my life. This doesn’t mean that I’ve accepted all the phony excuses, rationalizations and various and sundry other forms of B.S. that is regularly dished out by the hierarchy in response to the “crisis” and other problems caused by them. It does mean that they don’t control me through my anger at them. It’s sort of like the silly business of forgiveness. The church officials tell us we must forgive by which they mean forget and absolve them from any accountability. That’s not forgiveness. That’s masochistic re-victimization. Forgiveness means not permitting the agents of the abuse to continue to do it.
I don’t go to church because it’s not authentic to me anymore. Rather than help me through what seemed to be a rapidly deepening spiritual nightmare, it was making it worse. The spiritual path that I have found in AA works. It’s genuine not because the Big Book says so, but because the people around me make it so.
I’m not writing off those who go to church and who find in organized Catholicism a source of peace and hope and a meaningful way to pass through this life. I’m trying not to judge the popes, bishops and others and I’m really trying to divest myself of the anger and harsh feelings. I take comfort in one of the important lessons I have learned from AA……”we seek spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.”
At the end of most AA meetings there is a simple ritual…a liturgy if you will. We stand in a circle, hold hands and together say the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer. Some people don’t say the prayers because it goes against their concept of the higher power. That’s OK. No one makes any judgments about it or draws any critical conclusions. But they stay in the circle and hold the hands of the people on either side. The circle…our liturgical action…isn’t just a symbol of an ideal but a sign of a reality.I don’t go to church and I no longer feel guilty about it. This entire sex abuse nightmare has forced me to shut the door on my Catholic infantilism and take the risk of being a Christian adult.
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